Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic
For many if not most of us, e-books are digital versions of printed books. And they are just that. Others, on the other hand, believe that e-books should offer additional content and multimedia enrichment. Meet Bill Adair, Knight Professor for the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University, who recently described his disappointing experience with e-books in an article published on Poynter's.
Do you think e-books need to be "enhanced" with multimedia features for a richer experience? Or do you prefer the single-dimensional aspect of text, where any kind of enhancement could potentially be intrusive and get in the way with the story? |
I agree with Prof Adair -- considering that ebooks are all being sold at prices close to or at the cost of the print edition, where the publishers are reaping the profit benefits of eliminating the costs of production and most of the costs of distribution.
I think that if ebooks are going to continue to be sold at these inflated prices then publishers should start doing as much content-enrichment as they can feasibly do without putting undue pressure on ereading devices. Following the transition from VHS to DVD, with the addition of so much more storage space on the new medium film companies began including commentaries, biographies of actors, directors, and producers, alternate endings, and all sorts of neat stuff which purchasers of the DVDs could either watch or ignore as it suited them.
I see no reason why electronic versions of ebooks could or should not also include additional enrichements. Such as, hyperlinks to online content (wikipedia pages for the author, that particular book series, etc.) or embedded audio or video content to supplement the text. In the case of Dan Brown's Inferno, supplementary material on any of the renaissance art and architecture mentioned in the text would have been both easy and cost effective to include.
Other ideas would be images of the actual book jacket information (or included book jacket text and quotes), interviews with the author (video, audio, or text... however originally published), index of related material available in an electronic format (whether for sale or for free for registered purchasers or whatever the "offer" might be), or even a tool for searching for further recommendations based on this book combined with information about other books on your e-device (richer than mass, more targeted to what you are interested in now and across multiple sellers than recommendations would be based only on your purchase history at a particular e-seller)